Tuesday, January 9, 2007

"This Time For Sure!"

“Character is fate, the Greeks believed. A hundred years of German philosophy went into the making of this decision in which the seed of self-destruction lay embedded, waiting for its hour. The voice was Schlieffen's but the hand was the hand of Fichte who saw the German people chosen by Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe, of Hegel who saw them leading the world to a glorious destiny of compulsory Kultur, of Nietzsche who told them that Supermen were above ordinary controls, of Treitschke who set the increase of power as the highest moral duty of the state, of the whole German people, who called their temporal ruler the `All-Highest.' What made the Schlieffen plan was ... the body of accumulated egoism which suckled the German people and created a nation fed on `the desperate delusion of the will that deems itself absolute.'”

German youths marinated in the delusional ideology described above marched giddily to war in August 1914 wearing belt buckles adorned with the slogan Gott Mit Uns (“God is with us”). The Schlieffen Plan envisioned a rapid strike by the German right wing through Belgium, with the last man on the right “brush[ing] the Channel with his sleeve.” German troops anticipated that they would be on the Boulevard in Paris in a matter of weeks.

Yes, this would be an aggressive war in violation of every civilized notion of international relations. But von Moltke had long since dispensed with such trivial concerns. “We must put aside all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the aggressor,” he stated in 1913. “Success alone justifies war.”

Besides, Kaiser Wilhelm II – hailed by the Germans as the “All-Highest,” perceived by himself to be “The Finger of God” -- had given Belgium a chance to collaborate in the unfolding of Germany's providential destiny, and their monarch had turned him down.

In 1904, Germany's “All-Highest” paid a visit to Belgium's King Leopold II, seeking to inveigle him into an alliance with promises of snatching territory from France. Leopold was hardly a model of probity, emitting what Tuchman calls an “aura of wickedness composed of mistresses, money, Congo cruelties, and other scandals.”

Although Leopold was many reprehensible things, “fool” was not found on that list. He pointed out to Wilhelm, whose foolishness was a match for his ambition, that the Belgian monarch didn't dispose of the same powers exercised by his 15th Century forebears. The King told the Kaiser that his Ministers and Parliament wouldn't approve of the alliance.

“That was the wrong thing to say,” notes Tuchman, “for the Kaiser flew into one of his rages and scolded the King for putting respect for Parliament and Ministers above respect for the Finger of God....”

“I told him I could not be played with,” the Kaiser told Chancellor von Bulow. “Whoever in the case of European war was not with me was against me.”

It's difficult to read those lines without thinking of the curdled little man-child in the White House, his own delusions of divine destiny (surely, George W. Bush could only be the “Finger of God” if The Almighty were treating humanity to an obscene gesture), his lunatic “global democratic revolution” -- and his determination to emulate the worst elements of WWI-era statecraft by reinforcing the his failure in Iraq at the cost of additional thousands of lives.

The formal announcement of the planned “surge” in Iraq will be what I call a “Bullwinkle Moment.” Many recall how the beloved dim-wit cartoon moose, consistently thwarted in his efforts to pull a rabbit out of his hat, exclaimed, “This time for sure!” -- before failing again.

“This time for sure!” pretty much encapsulates what passes for the White House strategy behind Bush's intention to dispatch tens of thousands of additional US soldiers to Iraq. The same could have been said of the demented rulers who refused to reconsider their course in World War I once the Western Front had become the scene of a pointlessly bloody stalemate: As long as they had a steady supply of young men to throw into the abattoir, the rulers would insist, “This time for sure!”

US intervention broke the stalemate, but it also led to a vindictive post-war settlement that engendered totalitarian movements in Germany, Italy, and Russia, thereby ensuring a bloody conflict less than a generation later. One enduring legacy of that war – the murder-suicide of the Christian West – is the modern Middle East, including the spurious nation called Iraq.

In defending the Bush Regime's plan to reinforce failure in Iraq, my local newspaper offered, without any ironic intention I can detect, the following assessment:

“An infusion of reinforcements will create a decent interval of stability to help kick-start economic aid projects and provide the Iraqi government with time and space to be successful.”

I doubt the author of those words caught the historic resonance, or had any inkling of the way that phrase had been used to justify several pointless years of bloodshed in our last misbegotten foreign war.

So Washington is once again the in business of requiring young soldiers and Marines – and not-so-young Reservists and Guardsmen – to kill and die on behalf of a “decent interval.”

Because our ruling class is confined in the intellectual prison called the “bi-partisan foreign policy consensus,” our soldiers will remain mired in Mesopotamia – unless George W. Bush and the adults who surround him decide to expand the war into Syria, Iran, or both. But as the Wall Street Journal(subscription req.) points out, the elements are in place for a disastrous regional war, even if the Bush Regime doesn't deliberately expand the conflict, as it clearly lusts to do.

The region is likely to erupt even if we were to remove our troops from Iraq now. This would be a catastrophe, but one we could survive.

Under the Constitution's allotment of war powers, it is possible for Congress to order the Bushling to get our troops out of Iraq immediately; doing so is a moral and patriotic necessity.

But our rulers esteem the interventionist “consensus” -- and its related doctrine of imperial presidential war powers -- more than their perjured oaths to the Constitution, and are hopeless hostages to the crusading ideology that has defined Washington's foreign policy since World War I.

Count Sergei Witte, the Russian Premier during the abortive Revolution of 1905, described the Imperial Russian government on the eve of World War I as an “insane regime ... [a] tangle of cowardice, blindness, craftiness, and stupidity.”

A better description cannot be found of the regime ruling us today, as well. And it's impossible to read Barbara Tuchman's description of Russia under Czar Nicholas II (who, it must be said, did not deserve what the Bolsheviks did to him and his family) without thinking of the petulant little figure in the Oval Office, and the incurably corrupt political system over which he presides:

“The regime was ruled from the top by a sovereign who had but one idea of government – to preserve intact the absolute monarchy bequeathed to him by his father – and who, lacking the intellect, energy, or training for his job, fell back on personal favorites, whim, simple mulishness, and other devices of the empty-headed autocrat.”

Nicholas II was widely seen as stoic and serene, when in fact his capacity to maintain his composure in the face of disaster was a reflection of “the indifference of a mind so shallow as to be all surface.”

George W. Bush's priorities and intellectual tool-kit are remarkably similar to those of the vapid Russian autocrat. And he's willing to send thousands of people to death needlessly in order to preserve his legacy against an ignominious – but imperative – withdrawal from Iraq.

Video music bonus

Thanks to Stephen Carson on Lew Rockwell's blog for pointing out this new cover of "One More Parade" by They Might Be Giants.

For those whose taste in anti-war anthems runs toward harder rock, I recommend this version of "Out In The Fields" by Gary Moore and the late Phil Lynott. Even more timely now than when it was recorded in 1985, this video is worth catching if only to see Moore -- perhaps the most elegantly visceral fretboard Jedi in the business -- tearing to shreds an Ibanez Roadstar II just like the one I had at the time.

8 comments:

great piece. some interesting links you have there. as for out in the field...that...hair. reminded me of that group "big country". And the one guy looked like ben roethlisberger with a fro. i will say this this though, those guys could really play! again, great piece.

Those are good and apt music clips for our time, even though the one by Lynott and Moore was over twenty years old. Ironically, even though I was young (perhaps 11 or 12 at the time), I actually remember Lynott as the iconic member of Thin Lizzy and The Boys Are Back in Town fame more than his involvement with these much later gigs. However, I never was a real fan of him or the group.

You know, I always loathed the "anti-war" movement during the Vietnam era as a kid. It was probably because, just as in this latest Iraq conflict, the main faces and agents provocateurs that one usually sees associated with any anti-war sentiment were and are communists, socialists, hippies (usually among the former), et al.

That's probably one of the reasons why, unfortunately, that so much of middle-class America sees ALL anti-war sentiment as just a typical mindset of that lot and are thereby blinded to the true and patriotic anti-war positions espoused by constitutionalists and libertarians (NOT libertines!).

If this sentiment has been, and still is, the product of that "pressure from above/below" strategy, it's historically been and still is fantastically and wildly successful!

The second reason why that is is because middle-class America sees the rich being exempt from war while sending their sons/daughters into the morass and see a draft as an equalizer, and see the draft-dodgers as likewise loathsome characters of the aforementioned lot. Yet they do not see that the draft itself is no sweat on the brow of the richie either. They can obtain deferments, at a minimum, up to outright exemptions (for college, etc.) or by paying an exorbitant fee. That richie father has no fear of his son/daughter being taken away to be cannon fodder, unlike the lower middle-class parents.

Ergo, as a result, they do not see that instead of screamin' their approval of a draft (which the rich likewise avoids relatively easily), they should be opposing it loudly and demanding that we get the hell out of foreign lands and fighting conflicts with folk that didn't attack us directly.

I also believe our military has for the most part since 1945 been exclusively used, in essence, as a UN (and now EU) proxy fighting force to fight for their collective interests, but under our banner. So any flak, hatred, and/or criticism that's sure to be kindled down the road by our actions will naturally be squarely aimed at us, not them.

Great plan...for them. Disastrous plan in almost every way imaginable for us. So it's been for the last 62 years (or in some ways since WWI, as you argue, but absolutely no question since the end of WWII) and counting, while we continue to wither economically, fiscally, politically, and culturally on the vine.

Your knowledge and understanding of historical events and their significance are largely unparalleled among most contemporary writers (your "peers," were they worthy of the title).

That being said, I wonder under what circumstances you imagine the government of the United States, or any other country, to be led by anyone other than an incompetent warmonger like Bush? Isn't it built into the system that people like Bush, and all the presidents before him, will rise to the top and create problems for us all?

I am curious to understand why people like you and George Reisman, who I tend to agree with 99% of the time otherwise on any given issue, are not full blown libertarians (anarchists) but stop at the brink of conservative-libertarianism in deeming there to be a proper and realistic role for the government.

The more I think about it, the more limited government appears to be a truly utopian ideal. Government always incentivizes expansive, liberty-destroying power-grabs.

But I know you and Dr. Reisman are thoughtful individuals, so I'd like to understand what stops you from what I see as being otherwise logically consistent. Social faus pax? Hard time swallowing it? Can't imagine it actually working in real life?

I want to add to Dixiedog's comment my quiet head-nodding in agreement. I always had a hard time being against war, too, because of the fact that I didn't want to be lumped in with all the social degenerates and other assorted morons who typically oppose war out of emotional, rather than intellectual, consideration (are socialists capable of intellect?)

I was having lunch with my father this week and he mentioned the proposed troop surge. I told him I thought it was pointless and that the best thing we could do was to pull out completely and I explained why. He didn't say anything after that for a bit, chewed his food and then changed the subject.

I think he thinks his son is in his "college leftist hippie stage," but I just don't think that's what it's about as I recognize leftist hippies for the morons they are. I think I am above them in my thinking.

Your comments are so appropriate, especially in light of GW's address yesterday. BTW, Gary moore was also playing a a Strat in the video and some sort of early synth guitar...I remember the synth guitar but can't recall what it was called or who made it. Any recollections?

BTW, DD...you betray your age in your post. I pictured you as being in your early 50's.

BTW, DD...you betray your age in your post. I pictured you as being in your early 50's.

Not quite, Cap'n Kirk. 42 (in March) isn't that far removed however ;). I had said in a previous thread, that I can't recall right off, how I always associated myself with older folk, especially since HS, rarely with folk in my own age group.